Posts For: June 27, 2013

In 2009, the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center named Sheikh Abdullah Bin Bayyah as one of the 500 most influential Muslims in the world. The cleric has also worked with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on what are said to be global health issues. So perhaps there is nothing wrong about him attending a meeting at the White House on June 13 to confer with Obama administration officials, including some of the members of the National Security Council. Or so the administration thought. As it turns out, Sheikh Bin Bayyah’s resume is a little longer than that short list of distinctions. As Steven Emerson and John Rossomando of The Investigative Project reported on Wednesday, as vice president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, he’s also a leading supporter of Hamas and endorsed Islamist terrorism against U.S. troops in Iraq. If that isn’t enough, he’s also a disciple of radical Egyptian cleric Yusuf Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, who is banned from the U.S. as a result of his repeated calls for the murder of both Jews and Americans.

So what exactly was the Obama administration thinking when it not only granted him a visa to come to the United States but actually invited him to the White house to confer with administration officials to discuss what we are told are issues relating to poverty, global health and to encourage him to continue speaking ill of al-Qaeda? While that last point may make the decision to embrace Bin Bayyah seem defensible, how is it possible that a known supporter of a group the U.S. has itself labeled as a terrorist organization, and whose record includes a long list of statements about the need to oppose U.S. policies, would be considered a proper advisor to people at the highest level of the American security establishment?

Unfortunately, the answer to these questions makes no more sense than administration replies to queries about why they have embraced the Muslim Brotherhood government of Egypt and why President Obama treats Turkey’s Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as if he’s his best friend.

In 2009, the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center named Sheikh Abdullah Bin Bayyah as one of the 500 most influential Muslims in the world. The cleric has also worked with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on what are said to be global health issues. So perhaps there is nothing wrong about him attending a meeting at the White House on June 13 to confer with Obama administration officials, including some of the members of the National Security Council. Or so the administration thought. As it turns out, Sheikh Bin Bayyah’s resume is a little longer than that short list of distinctions. As Steven Emerson and John Rossomando of The Investigative Project reported on Wednesday, as vice president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, he’s also a leading supporter of Hamas and endorsed Islamist terrorism against U.S. troops in Iraq. If that isn’t enough, he’s also a disciple of radical Egyptian cleric Yusuf Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, who is banned from the U.S. as a result of his repeated calls for the murder of both Jews and Americans.

So what exactly was the Obama administration thinking when it not only granted him a visa to come to the United States but actually invited him to the White house to confer with administration officials to discuss what we are told are issues relating to poverty, global health and to encourage him to continue speaking ill of al-Qaeda? While that last point may make the decision to embrace Bin Bayyah seem defensible, how is it possible that a known supporter of a group the U.S. has itself labeled as a terrorist organization, and whose record includes a long list of statements about the need to oppose U.S. policies, would be considered a proper advisor to people at the highest level of the American security establishment?

Unfortunately, the answer to these questions makes no more sense than administration replies to queries about why they have embraced the Muslim Brotherhood government of Egypt and why President Obama treats Turkey’s Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as if he’s his best friend.

Lest there be any doubt about Bin Bayyah’s presence in the White House, a “senior Obama administration official confirmed to Fox News that the meeting took place. But the fact that Bin Bayyah had already posted a photo of the meeting on his Web site, there was no need for anybody to go digging through the log of visitors to the White House.

The Investigative Project details Bin Bayyah’s record at length, but suffice it to say that despite a recent willingness to oppose al-Qaeda, his record on terrorism and radical Islamism should have rendered him off limits for entry to the United States, let alone being allowed to waltz into the White House.

While the Obama administration has developed an altogether commendable record on killing terrorists in the field, its weakness for some radical clerics and Islamist political parties in the Middle East has compromised its ability to think clearly about Egypt and Turkey. If the likes of Bin Bayyah are welcome in the White House, it’s little wonder the president and his foreign policy team have been unable to put forward a coherent policy on dealing with the problems of the Middle East.

Earlier this month I posted a piece on why I thought long-time conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly was wrong to write off the Hispanic vote. Ms. Schlafly is back at it, this time saying, “They don’t have any Republican inclinations at all. They’re running an illegitimacy rate that’s just about the same as the blacks are.” She went on to say this:

They come from a country where they have no experience with limited government. And the types of rights we have in the Bill of Rights, they don’t understand that at all, you can’t even talk to them about what the Republican principle is.

Now take two and a half minutes to watch this clip from a 1980 debate between Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush on illegal immigration, Mexico, and the policies they endorse. What you’ll see is that the approach and attitude of Bush and Reagan is profoundly different from what we’re hearing from many conservatives today on immigration. Set aside for a moment the differences in policy, which are significant. What I’m speaking to is a cast of mind, a temperament, a certain spirit of generosity that both Bush and Reagan (blessedly) had–and which has, for many on the right, virtually vanished. If these individuals don’t fully subscribe to the views of Schlafly and Patrick J. Buchanan, they are certainly sympathetic to them. If a Republican today used language remotely similar to what Bush and Reagan did, they would be hooted off many a conservative stage. What makes this even odder is that many of the people who employ the most off-putting rhetoric on immigration either worked in the Reagan administration or consider themselves Reaganites. But on this subject at least, they are more nearly the antithesis of Reagan.

Earlier this month I posted a piece on why I thought long-time conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly was wrong to write off the Hispanic vote. Ms. Schlafly is back at it, this time saying, “They don’t have any Republican inclinations at all. They’re running an illegitimacy rate that’s just about the same as the blacks are.” She went on to say this:

They come from a country where they have no experience with limited government. And the types of rights we have in the Bill of Rights, they don’t understand that at all, you can’t even talk to them about what the Republican principle is.

Now take two and a half minutes to watch this clip from a 1980 debate between Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush on illegal immigration, Mexico, and the policies they endorse. What you’ll see is that the approach and attitude of Bush and Reagan is profoundly different from what we’re hearing from many conservatives today on immigration. Set aside for a moment the differences in policy, which are significant. What I’m speaking to is a cast of mind, a temperament, a certain spirit of generosity that both Bush and Reagan (blessedly) had–and which has, for many on the right, virtually vanished. If these individuals don’t fully subscribe to the views of Schlafly and Patrick J. Buchanan, they are certainly sympathetic to them. If a Republican today used language remotely similar to what Bush and Reagan did, they would be hooted off many a conservative stage. What makes this even odder is that many of the people who employ the most off-putting rhetoric on immigration either worked in the Reagan administration or consider themselves Reaganites. But on this subject at least, they are more nearly the antithesis of Reagan.

Now I understand that circumstances have changed, and conservatives are perfectly within their right to say that their attitude toward illegal and legal immigrants today is right and Reagan and Bush’s were wrong. But those conservatives who believe that Reagan, if he were alive today, would be standing with them are massively distorting the Reagan record–both his words and his deeds.

As America has become much more sensitive about the way it speaks about racially charged subjects, the language used by Republican standard bearers on illegal immigration has grown much less sensitive — and that’s happened as the clout of Hispanic voters has risen significantly. That’s a huge problem for Republicans.

It is indeed. And today the real Reaganites on immigration are people like Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, and Jeb Bush. The fact that they are targeted for such harsh criticism these days tells you a great deal about how much the GOP has moved on this issue; and how long the road back might be.

Egypt appears to be on the brink of chaos this week but the best advice America’s ambassador has for an embattled religious minority in the world’s most populous country is to stay home. The report about the visit of Ambassador Anne Patterson to Coptic Pope Tawadros II came from an Egyptian paper but is spreading rapidly around the Internet and being cited as an example of the tacit support the United States continues to show for the government of President Mohamed Morsi even as the country starts to fall apart. But with a mass protest scheduled for Sunday—the event Ambassador Patterson wanted Copts to stay away from—the president’s attitude toward the demonstrations that are shaking Morsi’s grip on power is more than a matter of curiosity.

This is, after all, an administration that did a lot to encourage the first round of Arab spring protests in Egypt that took down longtime U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak and ultimately replaced him with a Muslim Brotherhood government that may be far worse than the deposed authoritarian. But with Morsi’s calling on loyal army units to be reinforced and to be prepared for what may be an effort to suppress the protests, the White House has been remarkably quiet about what’s going on in Egypt.

Egypt appears to be on the brink of chaos this week but the best advice America’s ambassador has for an embattled religious minority in the world’s most populous country is to stay home. The report about the visit of Ambassador Anne Patterson to Coptic Pope Tawadros II came from an Egyptian paper but is spreading rapidly around the Internet and being cited as an example of the tacit support the United States continues to show for the government of President Mohamed Morsi even as the country starts to fall apart. But with a mass protest scheduled for Sunday—the event Ambassador Patterson wanted Copts to stay away from—the president’s attitude toward the demonstrations that are shaking Morsi’s grip on power is more than a matter of curiosity.

This is, after all, an administration that did a lot to encourage the first round of Arab spring protests in Egypt that took down longtime U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak and ultimately replaced him with a Muslim Brotherhood government that may be far worse than the deposed authoritarian. But with Morsi’s calling on loyal army units to be reinforced and to be prepared for what may be an effort to suppress the protests, the White House has been remarkably quiet about what’s going on in Egypt.

The problem here is that as far as many Egyptians are concerned, they have merely swapped a secular tyrant for a theocratic one and now see that that placing the Brotherhood in power was a terrible mistake. The Brotherhood hasn’t shown much aptitude for government and its actions have given the lie to the promises its leaders made to naïve Western journalists about not wishing to impose their fanatical religious beliefs on the rest of the nation.

There was a moment when Obama could have used the limited leverage that the U.S. has over the situation due to the billions it gives Egypt every year to try and help the military keep the Islamists from taking power. But instead, Obama pressured the army to let the Brotherhood rule. Now, after having been placed under Morsi’s thumb as part of a number of measures undertaken to solidify his party’s grasp on every aspect of Egypt’s government, the Islamists are looking to the army to help keep them in control and the U.S. seems to have nothing more helpful to say about than to tell Christians to stay out of it.

As with the protests that have shaken the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan—another Obama favorite—the U.S. has adopted a position of indifferent silence toward pro-democracy protesters in Cairo and other Egyptian sites where demonstrations have spread. This is very different from the outspoken position the administration took in 2010 when the Arab Spring protests spread across the region.

The question Americans ought to be asking about U.S. policy toward Egypt is why it was in the interests of the U.S. to support the Arab Spring in 2010 but not to support those Egyptians who wish to prevent their country from falling irrevocably into the hands of Islamists? The inability of the White House to provide a coherent answer to that query can be directly linked to the decline in U.S. influence in the region and the daunting prospects of even worse to come in the future.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare, should be the feather in the cap of the Obama administration. Instead, two years after its passage, the Obama administration is begging professional sports leagues like the NFL and MLB to help promote a signature feature of the law: exchanges. The Health and Human Services Department is leading the outreach to the leagues in an effort to spread the word about how fans could sign up. The Washington Post explains why the demographic is so desirable for HHS:

A partnership with well-known athletes and sports teams could provide a significant boost as officials ramp up efforts to encourage enrollment among a demographic crucial to the success of the health law — healthy young males.

Millions of people with health problems are expected to jump at the chance to sign up for coverage that will begin Jan. 1; insurers will no longer be allowed to reject them. To offset the cost of those potentially costly customers, officials say, millions of young and healthy people need to enroll in health plans.

Are young people really this gullible? Will they really sign up in droves to pay for the healthcare coverage of their fellow Americans with their own meager paychecks, already stretched thin by student loans and households disproportionately affected by the recession? The Wall Street Journalexplains just how losing a proposition buying into healthcare exchanges would be for the average healthy young American:

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare, should be the feather in the cap of the Obama administration. Instead, two years after its passage, the Obama administration is begging professional sports leagues like the NFL and MLB to help promote a signature feature of the law: exchanges. The Health and Human Services Department is leading the outreach to the leagues in an effort to spread the word about how fans could sign up. The Washington Post explains why the demographic is so desirable for HHS:

A partnership with well-known athletes and sports teams could provide a significant boost as officials ramp up efforts to encourage enrollment among a demographic crucial to the success of the health law — healthy young males.

Millions of people with health problems are expected to jump at the chance to sign up for coverage that will begin Jan. 1; insurers will no longer be allowed to reject them. To offset the cost of those potentially costly customers, officials say, millions of young and healthy people need to enroll in health plans.

Are young people really this gullible? Will they really sign up in droves to pay for the healthcare coverage of their fellow Americans with their own meager paychecks, already stretched thin by student loans and households disproportionately affected by the recession? The Wall Street Journalexplains just how losing a proposition buying into healthcare exchanges would be for the average healthy young American:

Mr. Alito pointed out that young, healthy adults today spend an average of $854 a year on health care. ObamaCare would require them to buy insurance policies expected to cost roughly $5,800. The law, then, isn’t just asking them to pay for “the services that they are going to consume,” he continued. “The mandate is forcing these people to provide a huge subsidy to the insurance companies . . . to subsidize services that will be received by somebody else.”

Since he puts it that way, why would they sign up for ObamaCare, especially since the alleged penalties will be negligible and likely unenforced?

National Review’s Jonah Goldberg explained why, as a demographic, young people were among the most obligated to follow through with the promise of ObamaCare:

In two consecutive elections, you’ve carried Barack Obama to victory. When he said, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” he basically meant you. You voted for Obama by a margin of 66 percent to 32 percent in 2008, and, despite a horrendous economy for people your age, by nearly that much again in 2012.

…

Whenever curmudgeons like yours truly suggested that young people were getting caught up in a fad or that Obama was simply buying votes at the expense of taxpayers, you’d have a fit. You’d insist that millennials are not only informed, but eager to make sacrifices for the greater good.

Well, here’s your chance to prove it: Fork over whatever it costs to buy the best health insurance you can under Obamacare.

Given the average American’s cognitive dissonance when it comes to voting and politicians, it’s unlikely that any young Americans will make the connection between their voting behavior and their subsequent responsibility to their fellow Americans who, by growing margins, find themselves supporting a repeal of the law. Unfortunately for Obama, even with the positive publicity paid for by your tax dollars, it’s unlikely that the bill will become anything but less popular as more provisions slowly come into effect. Already Americans are increasingly worried that the quality of care that their families receive will be negatively impacted by the legislation. Soon, they can start adding another worry about the law and its impact on their family: shorter work hours as another provision of ObamaCare comes into effect. A local paper in Toledo, Ohio describes the impact for an ordinary Ohioan:

We talked to the owner of the restaurant Shane Beukre. He said any business with 50 or more employees will have to offer insurance to workers with 30 or more hours a week. If he does not do that, he gets fined $2,000 per employee.

Beukre told us he’s cutting some people down to under 30 hours to help with costs to his business and the workers.

As it is explained in the new law, under ObamaCare, everyone must have insurance. So, the next step for workers is to get a plan through expanded Medicaid or through state or federal exchanges that will give them options on plans. If a plan is not offered through their employer, workers could get a subsidy to help with insurance costs.

It might be cheaper for individual people to have hours cut and pay less for insurance, but [employee Jeff] Vernon said he’ll lose more than $400 a month with fewer hours and paying for health insurance.

“That leaves me $27.50 for two weeks to live off of,” said Vernon.

The story was the same in Indiana, with local congressmen explaining why they planned to support a bill that would raise the threshold for what constitutes a full-time employee from 30-hours to 40. Indiana Congressman Larry Bucshon told a local paper:

“It’s a big problem,” Bucshon said. “I think ultimately you’ll see members of Congress like myself try to address things like the 30- hour definition of a work week.”

He believes it will be a bipartisan effort. “People recognize this is an impending storm,” Bucshon said.

Unless it’s addressed, “We’ll become a nation of part-time employees,” the congressman said. There are many other issues associated with the Affordable Care Act that need to be addressed.

Even long after the bill was passed, we’re still finding out “what is in it” (in the words of Nancy Pelosi). Congress doesn’t have the time to write, debate and pass a bill for every unintended consequence that befalls Americans due to the original 2,700 page law. The mess that is ObamaCare cannot be undone by piecemeal legislation like what Congressman Bucshon has proposed. The only solution is total repeal and a return to the drawing board, before the most damaging effects of ObamaCare become real for struggling Americans.

Andrei Cherny begins his history of the 1948 Berlin Airlift with the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the World Trade Center. Though the outpouring of support for America around the world was overwhelming, Cherny says the reaction in Berlin stood apart. Berliners instinctively started pouring into the street near the Brandenburg Gate, and soon there were 200,000 of them. One stooped, elderly woman was asked by onlookers why she was crying. “I love Americans,” she said, then stood straight and smiled. “You see, I was a girl during the Airlift….”

Yesterday was exactly sixty-five years since General Lucius Clay, the American military governor in Germany after World War II, told Colonel Frank Howley, the American military governor of Berlin, “Frank, I’m ordering some planes in,” beginning the Berlin Airlift. In the postwar division of Germany, although Berlin sat in the Soviet zone it was divided with the Western powers and ruled by a joint command. The Soviets grew increasingly suspicious of what they believed to be a Western intent to unify Germany by, among other tactics, outcompeting the Soviets in the capital. After the introduction of a Western currency in West Berlin, the Soviets withdrew from the joint command and cut off Western land access to the city.

Andrei Cherny begins his history of the 1948 Berlin Airlift with the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the World Trade Center. Though the outpouring of support for America around the world was overwhelming, Cherny says the reaction in Berlin stood apart. Berliners instinctively started pouring into the street near the Brandenburg Gate, and soon there were 200,000 of them. One stooped, elderly woman was asked by onlookers why she was crying. “I love Americans,” she said, then stood straight and smiled. “You see, I was a girl during the Airlift….”

Yesterday was exactly sixty-five years since General Lucius Clay, the American military governor in Germany after World War II, told Colonel Frank Howley, the American military governor of Berlin, “Frank, I’m ordering some planes in,” beginning the Berlin Airlift. In the postwar division of Germany, although Berlin sat in the Soviet zone it was divided with the Western powers and ruled by a joint command. The Soviets grew increasingly suspicious of what they believed to be a Western intent to unify Germany by, among other tactics, outcompeting the Soviets in the capital. After the introduction of a Western currency in West Berlin, the Soviets withdrew from the joint command and cut off Western land access to the city.

The West, led by the United States, could not simply accede to this bullying and leave the Berliners in their care to the Soviets. “We shall stay, period,” said President Truman. The only way to get to their sector of Berlin, however, was now by air. And so American warplanes were loaded with food and coal and flown every day into the city for a year.

The Berlin Airlift sent the right message simultaneously to Germany, the free world, and the Stalin regime. And as much as it remains a splendid show of American resolve and ingenuity, it cannot be considered in a vacuum. The Berlin blockade was the result of Soviet fears of an encroaching Western-led economic recovery that would discredit the Soviet system lagging behind in adjacent sectors of postwar Europe. And that had much to do with the European Recovery Program, better known simply as the Marshall Plan, which was crafted and debated throughout the previous year but signed by Truman in April 1948.

The bitter winter of 1947 had made it clear that Europe had more to fear from a collapsed Germany than a resurgent one. Truman once and for all put an end to the Morgenthau Plan–agreed to by a fading FDR who later claimed to have no memory of signing onto the plan at a bilateral summit with Winston Churchill–to raze Germany and set the country back decades, if not centuries, on economic development and industrial capabilities. The Marshall Plan commenced the recovery of Europe, Germany included.

But the Marshall Plan (and the ongoing 1948 discussions that would result in the establishment of NATO the following year) must also be understood in the context that produced this sense of urgency that essentially created the postwar military order. And no one event did as much to shake the West out of its relative complacency than the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia barely a month before Truman signed the Marshall Plan.

The culmination of the coup, in February 1948, served as the wakeup call. The Czech government was made up of Communist and non-Communist ministers, and the Soviet loyalists had thoroughly infiltrated the country to the point where they were ready to force a confrontation. Scheduled elections were looming in a few months, but non-Communist ministers worried that by then the Communists would have the game rigged and there would be no way to hold free elections. So they forced a crisis by resigning from the government en masse, hoping to get more than half the ministers to resign, breaking the quorum. They failed to get enough ministers to step down, essentially leaving posts open for their enemies, and Communist control was further solidified.

That was the end of a coup three years in the making, however. Evelyn Gordon wrote earlier about the free world’s abandonment of Czechoslovakia before World War II, but they again abandoned it after the war. Dwight Eisenhower famously refused to race the Soviets to Berlin at the end of the war because he thought the German capital to be of mostly symbolic value, and the war in the Pacific wasn’t over. But he also believed that he had no business making “political” considerations when his job was to make military decisions. The postwar fate of a city was, in Eisenhower’s mind, strictly political.

He used that same justification not to press forward to liberate Prague. In 1945 the American troops arrived on the Czech border, where Eisenhower said they would stop. Marshall agreed. General Patton did not, and with the outbreak of fighting between Czech insurgents and German troops within the country Patton was able to get Eisenhower to press on. But Eisenhower halted the advance fifty miles from Prague when the Red Army was 200 miles away.

It was a terrible mistake. The Allies shared military occupation of Czechoslovakia, but the refusal to liberate Prague had both practical and symbolic consequences. Symbolically, “We sold the country down the river,” Igor Lukes quotes an American diplomatic official saying regretfully. “We could have liberated Prague. After the war we spent a lot of time trying to convince the Czechs that they weren’t part of the East Bloc. But no matter what we said the Soviets came to Prague first.”

The practical effects were worse. With the exiled Czech president out of the country during the war and Prague open for the taking, Communists and their sympathizers were able to get a major foothold in governance and security–which was exceptionally important, obviously, for the Soviet efforts at establishing the iron curtain and putting Czechoslovakia on their side of it.

There was blame enough to go around, including from Czech officials too willing to play ball in the early postwar days with Stalin. But those officials learned a lesson from Yalta: if the Western powers were willing to sell out the Polish government in exile after fighting a war ostensibly over the invasion of Poland, they would be willing to sell out the Czechs too. Of course, the Polish fate more or less awaited the Czechs anyway, because Western leaders were not the only ones naively putting their faith in Stalin’s word.

The refusal to liberate Prague ultimately consigned a generally pro-Western country to Soviet police-state terror. It taught the West the importance of geopolitical hinge states as well–a lesson Stalin didn’t need. And it stands as a reminder, sixty-five years later, of the moral incoherence and strategic folly of forgetting who our true allies are.

The most recent installment in the New York Times’s effort to dial America’s security back to a September 10, 2001 mentality came today in the form of an article detailing the latest faux scandal the paper has tried to attach to the New York City Police Department. What did the NYPD do now? Apparently, in an unusual bout of federal-local cooperation, the Central Intelligence Agency allowed four of its staffers to help New York’s police deal with terror threats in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. But rather than applaud this commendable instance of the national security establishment reaching out to reinforce the front lines of defense against terror, the piece was aimed at piling on the NYPD and showing that it had somehow lost its way during the course of a decade in which it managed to ensure that New York would not suffer a single terror death despite numerous plots launched by Islamists that sought to slaughter residents of the Big Apple just as they did on 9/11.

The source of the story was an internal CIA report that raised questions about the legality of having some employees of the spy agency taking part in domestic police work. But while there are obvious legal issues associated with any potential CIA spying on Americans, that doesn’t appear to have been the case here. Instead, the four who worked with the NYPD appear to have merely helped provide much needed background on foreign threats for a department tasked with coping with a myriad of possible threats from foreign and homegrown terrorists. Like the department’s sensible decision to try and get intelligence about key gathering places for Islamists that the Times has wrongly portrayed as a violation of civil rights, the CIA-NYPD relationship appears to be yet another instance in which local and national authorities are being bashed by the Times and other liberals for doing their jobs.

The most recent installment in the New York Times’s effort to dial America’s security back to a September 10, 2001 mentality came today in the form of an article detailing the latest faux scandal the paper has tried to attach to the New York City Police Department. What did the NYPD do now? Apparently, in an unusual bout of federal-local cooperation, the Central Intelligence Agency allowed four of its staffers to help New York’s police deal with terror threats in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. But rather than applaud this commendable instance of the national security establishment reaching out to reinforce the front lines of defense against terror, the piece was aimed at piling on the NYPD and showing that it had somehow lost its way during the course of a decade in which it managed to ensure that New York would not suffer a single terror death despite numerous plots launched by Islamists that sought to slaughter residents of the Big Apple just as they did on 9/11.

The source of the story was an internal CIA report that raised questions about the legality of having some employees of the spy agency taking part in domestic police work. But while there are obvious legal issues associated with any potential CIA spying on Americans, that doesn’t appear to have been the case here. Instead, the four who worked with the NYPD appear to have merely helped provide much needed background on foreign threats for a department tasked with coping with a myriad of possible threats from foreign and homegrown terrorists. Like the department’s sensible decision to try and get intelligence about key gathering places for Islamists that the Times has wrongly portrayed as a violation of civil rights, the CIA-NYPD relationship appears to be yet another instance in which local and national authorities are being bashed by the Times and other liberals for doing their jobs.

The CIA is prohibited from engaging in domestic surveillance. But nothing here remotely smacks of illegal behavior on the part of the agency or its employees. Of the four CIA personnel who were embedded with the NYPD, one was there on unpaid leave—and was paid by the police—and therefore exempt from any limits as to what he could see or do. Another was, according to the Times’s account, given the thankless and probably futile task of trying to better the always-fractious relationship between the FBI and the NYPD. Two others were analysts who may have seen some “unfiltered files” concerning local suspects but do not appear to have actually engaged in surveillance of any kind.

None of this seems particularly controversial, let alone illegal. But apparently some in the CIA, like the Times, were not comfortable with this much cooperation between anyone connected with the spooks in Langley, Virginia and New York cops. The author of the internal report (which was originally classified but was made available to the Times via a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit) was particularly unhappy about a CIA officer trying to broker peace between the NYPD and the FBI, since it had “placed the agency in the middle of a contentious relationship.” But the main “concern” of the CIA report critical of the cooperation with New York was that there were “risks” associated with helping the NYPD that were better not run. In other words, some in the spy agency considered themselves better off not doing all they could to prevent attacks on the homeland if it meant possible involvement in controversies.

In a sense, the Times article vindicates that view, since it lumps in the CIA’s help to New York with the paper’s attacks on the NYPD’s surveillance of mosques known to be Islamist hotbeds and other issues that supposedly demonstrate a police department that is out of control and oppressing local Muslims.

The CIA has long held itself aloof from any involvement in police actions and not only because of legal prohibitions. But what happened after 9/11 was a realization that one of the reasons the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon succeeded was the lack of cooperation between the various security agencies that seemed to view their domestic rivals as a greater threat than they did al-Qaeda. What happened on 9/11 was supposed to end that nonsense and it appears in this case, that is exactly what happened. The embedding of CIA analysts at New York’s One Police Plaza was exactly what was needed, and the sterling record the NYPD achieved on terror during the last decade is a tribute to the sort of thinking that would have been considered “outside the box” prior to 9/11.

But that is exactly what the Times and other liberal critics of the NYPD don’t want. As much as the paper pays lip service to the threat from Islamist terror, it seems to wish to demonize every effort made by the NYPD to save the lives of New Yorkers. If the NYPD, the CIA and other agencies are loathe to expose themselves to this sort of abuse in the future, we can look to the Times and other advocates of a 9/10 mentality to find the reason. We only hope New Yorkers and the rest of the nation don’t pay for this folly in blood.

Let’s assume for a moment that Secretary of State John Kerry actually succeeds in getting Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas to sit down and talk with Israel for the first time since George W. Bush was president. As I wrote earlier this week, if that happens that will be the result of American promises to back the Palestinians on various issues and probably also a pledge to put a time limit on the negotiations in order to heighten the pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Even if all that happens, most of the international media and virtually everyone in the foreign policy establishment seems to take it as a given that the primary obstacle to a deal will be Israel’s recalcitrance in making concessions. But that Netanyahu isn’t willing to deal is a myth, which is why so many in his coalition have been speaking up to talk about their opposition to a two-state solution.

As Haaretz reports today, various high level sources including a senior Cabinet minister are saying that Netanyahu is ready to give up more than 90 percent of the West Bank and evacuate “more than a few settlements” if Abbas is serious about peace deal that will truly end the conflict and give assurances about security. So the operative question for the region, as Kerry tries to pressure the parties to sit down prior to September, is whether Abbas is ready to take yes for an answer in the way that he wasn’t in 2008 when he turned down an offer of a state from Netanyahu’s predecessor Ehud Olmert.

Since few think Abbas will ever be able to sign off on any accord that recognizes the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn, it’s doubtful that Netanyahu will ever have to make good on these promises. But that hasn’t stopped right-wingers in his coalition from getting upset about the prospect of a pullback on the West Bank. But leaving aside the panic on the right, Netanyahu’s willingness to give up so much territory should focus the world on what it is exactly that the Palestinians want or are prepared to live with.

Let’s assume for a moment that Secretary of State John Kerry actually succeeds in getting Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas to sit down and talk with Israel for the first time since George W. Bush was president. As I wrote earlier this week, if that happens that will be the result of American promises to back the Palestinians on various issues and probably also a pledge to put a time limit on the negotiations in order to heighten the pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Even if all that happens, most of the international media and virtually everyone in the foreign policy establishment seems to take it as a given that the primary obstacle to a deal will be Israel’s recalcitrance in making concessions. But that Netanyahu isn’t willing to deal is a myth, which is why so many in his coalition have been speaking up to talk about their opposition to a two-state solution.

As Haaretz reports today, various high level sources including a senior Cabinet minister are saying that Netanyahu is ready to give up more than 90 percent of the West Bank and evacuate “more than a few settlements” if Abbas is serious about peace deal that will truly end the conflict and give assurances about security. So the operative question for the region, as Kerry tries to pressure the parties to sit down prior to September, is whether Abbas is ready to take yes for an answer in the way that he wasn’t in 2008 when he turned down an offer of a state from Netanyahu’s predecessor Ehud Olmert.

Since few think Abbas will ever be able to sign off on any accord that recognizes the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn, it’s doubtful that Netanyahu will ever have to make good on these promises. But that hasn’t stopped right-wingers in his coalition from getting upset about the prospect of a pullback on the West Bank. But leaving aside the panic on the right, Netanyahu’s willingness to give up so much territory should focus the world on what it is exactly that the Palestinians want or are prepared to live with.

As with Netanyahu’s ground breaking 2009 speech at Bar-Ilan University where he formally embraced a two-state solution, we can expect his critics to dismiss these latest signals that his government is willing to make sacrifices for peace. We will be told that there is no point offering the Palestinians a state on terms they can’t accept.

Palestinians say they have been waiting for several decades to get a state. They could have had one in 1947 when Palestinian Arabs and the rest of the Arab and Muslim world disdained a United Nations partition plan that called for a Jewish state and an Arab one to be created in the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. Three times since 2000 they have continued to say no to offers that would have again divided the land and given them a chance for independence.

But if Abbas is again going to treat an offer of statehood that would give him more than 90 percent of the West Bank as nothing or insists on accepting nothing less than a militarized Palestinian state (something that Israel is already experiencing on its southern border in Hamas-run Gaza, which is an independent state in all but name), then we are entitled to ask why.

In speaking of taking these kinds of risks for peace, Netanyahu is going far beyond what most of his supporters think is reasonable. Yet if after all this time, the Palestinians are not willing to talk or stay at the table for more than a few days or weeks simply because they cannot get all of the West Bank or Jerusalem or even to accept demilitarization, then the world should draw conclusions about their intentions. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the obstacle to peace in the Middle East isn’t Netanyahu or Israeli settlements. It’s the hate and intransigence that drives the Palestinian political culture that makes it impossible for Abbas to ever sign a deal. Though I don’t expect most in the foreign policy establishment to acknowledge this fact, what will happen in the next couple of months is likely to reaffirm this basic fact.

When an acclaimed historian says he sees a terrifying historical pattern repeating itself, he deserves to be taken seriously. And Benny Morris is assuredly one of Israel’s most famous historians. Unfortunately, his warning is unlikely to be seen by many, since it’s buried at the end of a somewhat tedious book review. And it’s liable to be ignored by those who need to hear it most.

Morris reviewed Patrick Tyler’s Fortress Israel: The Inside Story of the Military Elite Who Run the Country—and Why They Can’t Make Peace for the summer issue of the Jewish Review of Books. Most of the almost 5,000-word review was devoted to detailing Tyler’s numerous egregious errors and showing how they undermine his conclusions. But by itself, Morris wrote, Tyler’s spurious history would be insignificant. What makes it noteworthy is that it’s part of a much larger trend:

When an acclaimed historian says he sees a terrifying historical pattern repeating itself, he deserves to be taken seriously. And Benny Morris is assuredly one of Israel’s most famous historians. Unfortunately, his warning is unlikely to be seen by many, since it’s buried at the end of a somewhat tedious book review. And it’s liable to be ignored by those who need to hear it most.

Morris reviewed Patrick Tyler’s Fortress Israel: The Inside Story of the Military Elite Who Run the Country—and Why They Can’t Make Peace for the summer issue of the Jewish Review of Books. Most of the almost 5,000-word review was devoted to detailing Tyler’s numerous egregious errors and showing how they undermine his conclusions. But by itself, Morris wrote, Tyler’s spurious history would be insignificant. What makes it noteworthy is that it’s part of a much larger trend:

Fortress Israel is just the latest in a spate of venomous perversions of the record that have appeared in the past few years in the United States and Britain, all clearly designed to subvert Israel’s standing in the world. Deliberately or not, such books and articles are paving the way for a future abandonment of the Jewish state.

I am reminded of the spate of books and articles that appeared in Western Europe in 1936 through 1938 repudiating the legitimacy of the newly formed Czechoslovakia before its sacrifice to the Nazi wolves. In 1934, the Conservative weekly Truth hailed Czechoslovakia as “the sole successful experiment in liberal democracy that has emerged from the post-War settlement.” By the end of 1936, The Observer was writing it off as “a diplomatic creation with no sufficient national basis either in geography or race.” By March 1938 The New Statesman, in the past a great friend to central Europe’s only democracy, was writing: “We should urge the Czechs to cede the German-speaking part of their territory to Hitler without more ado.” Of course, as all understood, this meant leaving Czechoslovakia defenseless. Hitler conquered the rump of the country a few months later without a shot. The appeasement of the Arab-Islamist world at Israel’s expense is in the air and Tyler is one of its (very, very) minor harbingers.

Reasonable people can disagree about how we should deal with this dangerous trend. But the first step is to recognize that it exists: that we’ve seen this historical pattern before, and it has deadly real-world consequences.

Unfortunately, Morris today is persona non grata with many of the people who most need to hear this warning. For years, he was a hero of the self-described “peace camp,” due both to his role as a leading “new historian” who challenged accepted Israeli historiography (he catapulted to fame in 1988 when he published The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949) and to his outspoken left-wing politics: He favored a Palestinian state before it was fashionable and was jailed for refusing to do military service in the territories.

But after the second intifada broke out, he became convinced that what the Palestinians wanted wasn’t peace, but “to extinguish the Jewish national project and to inherit all of Palestine.” That made him anathema to many well-meaning and genuinely pro-Israel people who can’t abide that conclusion–and they are also the people who find it hardest to accepting the delegitimizers as enemies who must be fought at all costs. Instead, they often favor “dialogue” and “an inclusive big tent.”

But Morris is a historian, not a politician, and his politics shouldn’t be allowed to obscure the validity of his historical analysis. The Czechoslovakian analogy he sees is frightening–and we ignore it at Israel’s peril.

With Edward Snowden still stuck in the purgatory of Moscow’s international airport, it is worth taking a moment to note some news reporting of recent days on the damage he has already done.

The Associated Press reports that “members of virtually every terrorist group, including core al-Qaida, are attempting to change how they communicate, based on what they are reading in the media, to hide from U.S. surveillance.”

The Washington Postreports that intelligence analysts scouring NSA databases to figure out what Snowden stole believe there is a lot more information in his possession than has already come out: “They think he copied so much stuff — that almost everything that place does, he has,” said one former government official.

With Edward Snowden still stuck in the purgatory of Moscow’s international airport, it is worth taking a moment to note some news reporting of recent days on the damage he has already done.

The Associated Press reports that “members of virtually every terrorist group, including core al-Qaida, are attempting to change how they communicate, based on what they are reading in the media, to hide from U.S. surveillance.”

The Washington Postreports that intelligence analysts scouring NSA databases to figure out what Snowden stole believe there is a lot more information in his possession than has already come out: “They think he copied so much stuff — that almost everything that place does, he has,” said one former government official.

The Daily Beast reports that Snowden made encrypted digital copies of all of his files and sent them contacts around the world, with the proviso that if anything happens to him the recipients of his files will receive the passwords needed to unlock them.

It may be the case that whoever Snowden sent the files to can’t unlock them without a password, but there is little doubt that the intelligence services of major countries such as Russia and China can easily break through password protections.

The Los Angeles Timesreports on the widespread assumption that Russian intelligence agents have already gotten access to “his treasure trove of U.S. intelligence data,” whether he wanted to give it to them or not: “Agents could copy Snowden’s confidential computer files without his cooperation, as he has been in their custody for days in a diplomatic no man’s land at Sheremetyevo airport.” It goes without saying that Chinese intelligence, which is at least as sophisticated as the Russian service, gained access to the same files while Snowden was on their home turf in Hong Kong.

Little wonder, then, that Gen. Keith Alexander, head of NSA, has said that Snowden “has caused irreversible and significant damage to our country and to our allies.” Snowden may in fact prove to be one of the worst traitors in American history. The only puzzle is why he still has any defenders left.

For years, we’ve been told that there’s plenty of time to stop Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon. The world laughed when Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu drew a red line across a cartoon bomb at the United Nations last fall to demonstrate the need to act before it was too late. President Obama, who has vociferously pledged that Tehran will never gain such a weapon on his watch, tried engagement and then a mix of sanctions and diplomacy to try and make good on his promise. He still insists that this policy will eventually work and with the election of a new supposedly more moderate Iranian president, virtually everyone in the chattering classes and the foreign policy establishment has seemed content to allow the administration to keep talking about talking with the Islamist regime even if there’s no sign that it will ever work. This complacence has been criticized by American conservatives and some Israelis to little effect, but now one of the most reliable indicators of establishment thinking in Europe with little sympathy for Israel is agreeing with those long deemed alarmists about Iran.

In an eye-opening article published this week, the Economistdismisses the notion that anything the United States and its allies has been trying will work:

British and American intelligence sources think Iran is about a year away from having enough highly enriched uranium to make a bomb, and rather further from mastering the technologies to make a nuclear warhead small enough to fit into a missile. But David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector who is president of the Institute for Science and International Security, thinks that by mid-2014 Iran will have the capacity to produce enough fissile material for a single bomb in one or two weeks, should it choose to do so. It seems unlikely that Iran could be forced to change course on this matter by foreigners. The best that can be hoped for is that it decides that it does not want or need a nuclear weapon.

But given that, as the magazine stated in the opening sentence of the piece, “Iran is putting up with sanctions that damage its economy rather than accept a deal limiting its nuclear programme,” what possible reason is there to believe that the ayatollahs would simply give up what the regime has worked so long and hard to achieve? The obvious answer is none at all. Which means that the assurances we have been getting from Washington about having all the time in the world to let diplomacy work—in spite of repeated failures—was pure bunk. While I wouldn’t expect those who have been working diligently to switch American policy from one aimed at stopping Iran to one of containment (something Obama has disavowed) to draw any conclusions from this, it should be noted that this turn of events has led a leading columnist at Israel’s left-wing Haaretz newspaper to make a startling concession: Netanyahu was right all along.

For years, we’ve been told that there’s plenty of time to stop Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon. The world laughed when Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu drew a red line across a cartoon bomb at the United Nations last fall to demonstrate the need to act before it was too late. President Obama, who has vociferously pledged that Tehran will never gain such a weapon on his watch, tried engagement and then a mix of sanctions and diplomacy to try and make good on his promise. He still insists that this policy will eventually work and with the election of a new supposedly more moderate Iranian president, virtually everyone in the chattering classes and the foreign policy establishment has seemed content to allow the administration to keep talking about talking with the Islamist regime even if there’s no sign that it will ever work. This complacence has been criticized by American conservatives and some Israelis to little effect, but now one of the most reliable indicators of establishment thinking in Europe with little sympathy for Israel is agreeing with those long deemed alarmists about Iran.

In an eye-opening article published this week, the Economistdismisses the notion that anything the United States and its allies has been trying will work:

British and American intelligence sources think Iran is about a year away from having enough highly enriched uranium to make a bomb, and rather further from mastering the technologies to make a nuclear warhead small enough to fit into a missile. But David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector who is president of the Institute for Science and International Security, thinks that by mid-2014 Iran will have the capacity to produce enough fissile material for a single bomb in one or two weeks, should it choose to do so. It seems unlikely that Iran could be forced to change course on this matter by foreigners. The best that can be hoped for is that it decides that it does not want or need a nuclear weapon.

But given that, as the magazine stated in the opening sentence of the piece, “Iran is putting up with sanctions that damage its economy rather than accept a deal limiting its nuclear programme,” what possible reason is there to believe that the ayatollahs would simply give up what the regime has worked so long and hard to achieve? The obvious answer is none at all. Which means that the assurances we have been getting from Washington about having all the time in the world to let diplomacy work—in spite of repeated failures—was pure bunk. While I wouldn’t expect those who have been working diligently to switch American policy from one aimed at stopping Iran to one of containment (something Obama has disavowed) to draw any conclusions from this, it should be noted that this turn of events has led a leading columnist at Israel’s left-wing Haaretz newspaper to make a startling concession: Netanyahu was right all along.

While Israel was busy with light entertainment in the form of political reality shows, The Economist informed it this week that a difficult strategic reality is taking shape around it. What the world promised would never happen is happening at this very moment. What the top ranks of Israel’s defense establishment promised would never happen is in fact happening. Iran is becoming a nuclear power, while Israel (which is sunk in summer daydreams) stands alone.

From 2009 to 2012, a vigorous debate over Iran took place here. On one side were the optimists: President Shimon Peres, then-Mossad chief Meir Dagan, then-Shin Bet security service chief Yuval Diskin, then-Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, the defense establishment, the media establishment and the refreshing spirit of hoping for the best. On the other side was a gloomy, besmirched pessimist: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The mention of Dagan and Diskin is important here. The former spooks were two of the stars of The Gatekeepers, a film in which former security chiefs flayed Netanyahu’s government for its policies and have been lionized in the West as the sane, smart Israelis who should be listened to instead of the dumbbells that were elected by the Israeli people. Yet, as one of their cheerleaders now attests, they were wrong about the most important defense issue faced by the country.

But as Shavit writes, it was the famous gatekeepers and other liberal Israelis who were listened to by the West:

America is there, said the optimists. No, it isn’t, said the pessimist. There’s a hidden hand, said the optimists. No, there isn’t, said the pessimist. There’s time, said the optimists. No, there isn’t, said the pessimist. Iran’s nuclear program must be stopped by the fall of 2012, the pessimist said. It’s not Iran’s nuclear program that’s the problem, but the prime minister, the optimists said.

For three and a half years, the optimists went from one journalist to another and from one American to another and said that the pessimist is a dangerous purveyor of doom and gloom who sees molehills as mountains and doesn’t understand that the world won’t let Iran go nuclear. For three and a half years, the optimists tied the pessimist’s hands on the basis of the threefold promise of America, the hidden hand and time.

Just as Israel’s left-wingers have done much to poison the minds of Western journalists and opinion-makers about the standoff with the Palestinians, the willingness of so many top Jerusalem figures to align themselves against Netanyahu on Iran had serious consequences. The optimists, as Shavit calls them, refused to help the prime minister to ratchet up the pressure on Obama to act before Iran had amassed the huge store of enriched uranium that it now possesses or it had stored much of its nuclear infrastructure in hardened, mountainside bunkers that would be difficult even for the United States to destroy. Instead, they helped hamstring the efforts of Netanyahu and former Minister of Defense Ehud Barak in their efforts to mobilize the West to act or to get a green light from Washington for Israel to strike on its own.

After repeatedly accusing Netanyahu of crying “wolf” about Iran, as Shavit puts it, Israel must now deal with the fact that “a strategic wolf with nuclear teeth is now at the gate.”

But, as he notes, as dangerous as the situation has become, it is not too late for it to be corrected. A decision by the West to enact a total economic blockade and boycott of Iran—with no exceptions for China to buy their oil—could bring an already shaky Iranian economy to its knees in a manner than even the ayatollahs would have to notice. A credible threat of force rather than the amorphous language used by a president who is clearly determined to do anything but use force to stop Iran might also get their attention.

But with the U.S. seemingly ready to waste another year on a diplomatic track that is designed merely to give Iran more time to develop their nukes, there seems little chance of either of those things happening.

The result is the situation the Economist describes in which Iran is certain to get a nuclear weapon sometime before the midterm elections next year. At that point, apologies to Netanyahu from his detractors in both the U.S. and Israel will be both too late and of no use to a Jewish state confronted by a nuclear Iran that wants to wipe it off the map.

There was a moment this week when it appeared that the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups was really part of a broader sweep aimed at liberal groups too. That moment turned out to be fleeting. On Monday, acting IRS commissioner Danny Werfel told reporters that groups with certain liberal terms in their names were subjected to increased scrutiny as well. The press bought the story hook, line and sinker.

Werfel’s claims could not withstand scrutiny. As Eliana Johnson pointed out at National Review Online, Werfel’s account was misleading, conflated different categories of nonprofit groups, and contradicted the reality of the approval process and the involvement and oversight of higher-ups in Washington. But now the Treasury Department’s inspector general has cleared up any confusion: no, “progressive” groups were not targeted:

There was a moment this week when it appeared that the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups was really part of a broader sweep aimed at liberal groups too. That moment turned out to be fleeting. On Monday, acting IRS commissioner Danny Werfel told reporters that groups with certain liberal terms in their names were subjected to increased scrutiny as well. The press bought the story hook, line and sinker.

Werfel’s claims could not withstand scrutiny. As Eliana Johnson pointed out at National Review Online, Werfel’s account was misleading, conflated different categories of nonprofit groups, and contradicted the reality of the approval process and the involvement and oversight of higher-ups in Washington. But now the Treasury Department’s inspector general has cleared up any confusion: no, “progressive” groups were not targeted:

“Our audit did not find evidence that the IRS used the ‘progressives’ identifier as selection criteria for potential political cases between May 2010 and May 2012,” George wrote in the letter obtained by The Hill.

The inspector general also stressed that 100 percent of the groups with “Tea Party,” “patriots” and “9/12” in their name were flagged for extra attention.

“While we have multiple sources of information corroborating the use of Tea Party and other related criteria we described in our report, including employee interviews, e-mails and other documents, we found no indication in any of these other materials that ‘progressives’ was a term used to refer cases for scrutiny for political campaign intervention,” George wrote to Levin, the top Democrat on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.

Levin was flummoxed, but he wasn’t the only Democrat to try unsuccessfully to undermine conservatives’ claims with regard to the IRS. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, attempted earlier this month to simply will the story away. “Based upon everything I’ve seen the case is solved,” Cummings said. “And if it were me, I would wrap this case up and move on, to be frank with you.” Not only was the case clearly not “solved,” but another of the claims has since been debunked.

Cummings tried to use the testimony of one IRS staffer to imply that one group within the IRS was reviewing the Tea Party-related cases. But according to a lawsuit challenging the IRS’s abuse of power, twelve different IRS groups had participated in the targeting, as the Daily Caller notes:

Group 7821, Group 7822, Group 7823, Group 7824, Group 7827, Group 7828, Group 7829, Group 7830, Group 7838, EOG-7887, and EOG-7888, and the Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division in Washington, D.C. all targeted conservative groups between 2010 and 2012, according to documentation compiled by the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which has filed a class-action suit against the IRS.

Cummings has been a man on a mission throughout this scandal. Though the IRS doesn’t have many defenders, and its actions in this case are indefensible anyway, Cummings has tried his best to run the investigation into the IRS off the rails. It’s unclear exactly why Cummings fears where the investigation will lead, but that actually underlines why Cummings is wrong in the first place to claim the investigation has run its course. We still don’t know which officials in Washington directed the targeting, or how exactly the campaign came together.

Additionally, the White House misled reporters on this time and again, revising its story each time it was contradicted by the record. The Obama administration’s behavior is not one of a disinterested party who was kept in the dark and now shares the public’s outrage at the IRS’s actions. The administration behaves as if it has something to hide, and has already been shown to present false statements about who in the White House knew about the targeting and when. That doesn’t mean the president himself was giving orders, but neither can the Oversight Committee ignore the wealth of unanswered questions that remain about the case.

Cummings has called the investigation a witch hunt and a conspiracy theory, but he seems to be the one who has the most doubts as to how high this case goes. If the administration’s congressional allies really believed that no one beyond some low-level staffers could be implicated by the investigation, they’d welcome it. After all, it would exonerate the administration and the directors in Washington.

Cummings’s decision to release a full transcript of one of the Oversight Committee’s interviews with an IRS staffer, over the objection of committee head Darrell Issa, is also telling. Issa wants to prevent the interview subjects from being able to coordinate their stories, and thus not release the bulk of the questions and answers from the interviews. Cummings was only too happy to take a step that helps the perpetrators of this corrupt scheme at the expense of the victims. For all the left’s criticism of Issa’s investigative zeal, Cummings seems to have the most profound doubts about his own party’s innocence.